Hatch day surprise.

I order 10 french black copper marans eggs off ebay and have been awaiting hatch day. This morning I go look and I have one chick out and it's not the color I expected! On the sellers description he states he has 10 hens and 1 rooster and that one of his hens is lighter then the others but should produce black chicks. These are per the ad the only chickens on property and they are all new layers and under 1 year of age.

So I get my eggs and they are nice and dark but smaller as I expected since the hens are young.

But this is my first chick! It's got fuzzy legs, screaming it's head off every time I open the door to see how the hatch is going (bedroom door not incubator).

BCM can carry Wheaton genes. Apparently the Wheaton is recessive so doesn't show up until you breed two birds that both have the gene, then they show up. Some chatter going on about this on the Marans threads here on BYC recently

BCM can carry Wheaton genes. Apparently the Wheaton is recessive so doesn't show up until you breed two birds that both have the gene, then they show up. Some chatter going on about this on the Marans threads here on BYC recently

Click to expand...

Yes I found the thread shortly after I posted. Now somewhat better educated I'm still not sure if the outcome of the discussion on the thread was it a good or bad thing?

I really just purchased to try out the new hovabator while awaiting my own chickens to have fertile eggs. So little Mr/Miss yellow chick will go in the pet section. Still waiting to see if any siblings will make it, as one has a hole but not making much progress and another just started a crack.

I did write to the seller and let them know the chick born was not the color expected.. Waiting for a response.

Unless your color is heavily skewed, those eggs don't look like BCM to me. I have a girl who has been laying since early spring so she has lightened up and still much darker than those.

Click to expand...

Woops just caught this as I was trying to fix my profile.

That picture makes those eggs look like normal brown eggs, but it's a flash-via the lid on the hovabator-auto adjustment and suddenly those egg looks no darker then my wyndotte eggs. I actually took a picture when the eggs arrived. They were nice colored eggs and even this photo is not great at showing the darkness of the egg (cell phone camera). I should of put a normal brown egg in for comparison.

But my final total was two wheaton's and two normal BCM's. Now that they've been out of the shell for a couple of weeks I can tell one of the Black chicks is a roo with his big ole comb, and I'm puzzled as one of the wheatons has always been large and has larger legs but is not growing a comb at the rate the black chick is.